[TYPO3-english] Need advice on ways to secure files

[Tomas Havner]

Hi,

I have for a long time been looking for a way to provide my users with an 
easy way to protect their files in fileadmin from direct access. Telling 
them to put htaccess-files in the folders is simply not an option, and until 
now it don't seems to have been a good solution.

But one solution that seems very promising is "Authorized file links" 
(securelinks). 
http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/?tx_terfe_pi1%5Bview%5D=search&no_cache=1&tx_terfe_pi1%5Bsword%5D=securelinks. 
It uses:

includeLibs.securelinks = EXT:securelinks/class.tx_securelinks.php
lib.parseFunc_RTE {
  tags.link.typolink.userFunc = tx_securelinks->makeLink
}
lib.parseFunc {
  tags.link.typolink.userFunc = tx_securelinks->makeLink
}

to wrap the links and a pushfile to deliver the files.

What i'm wondering is:

1. Has anyone any experience of using this extension?
2. Will this method cause problems with performance?
3. To protect the folders I'm planning to implement a rewrite-rule that 
redirects all requests including the word "_private" to a 200-error-page. 
Are there problems with this method? Are the better ways of doing this?
4. Is anyone using a better, and user friendly method, to solve this 
problem?


Thanks

Tomas